Poor Clares
Catholic religious order of convent nuns
The Poor Clares, officially the Order of Saint Clare (Latin: Ordo Sanctae Clarae), originally referred to as the Order of Poor Ladies, and also known as the Clarisses or Clarissines, the Minoresses, the Franciscan Clarist Order, and the Second Order of Saint Francis, are members of an enclosed order of nuns in the Catholic Church. The Poor Clares were the second Franciscan branch of the order to be established. The first order of the Franciscans, which was known as the Order of Friars Minor, was founded by Francis of Assisi in 1209. Three years after founding the Order of Friars Minor, Francis of Assisi and Clare of Assisi founded the Order of Saint Clare, or Order of Poor Ladies, on Palm Sunday in the year 1212. They were organized after the manner of the Order of Friars Minor and before the Third Order of Saint Francis was founded. As of 2011, there were over 20,000 Poor Clare nuns in over 75 countries throughout the world. They follow several different observances and are organized into federations.
The Poor Clares follow the Rule of St. Clare, which was approved by Pope Innocent IV on the day before Clare's death in 1253. The main branch of the order (OSC) follows the observance of Pope Urban.
“Poor Clares” enters the record as catholic religious order of convent nuns. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Poor, Clares and Catholic can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q733658. VIAF identifies the subject as 142686435. The Library of Congress control number is n50078178. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1209, 1212, 2011 and 1253.
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This entry incorporates text from “Poor Clares” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.